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If it's any consolation, my little girl isn't any different...
posted by : anonymous2 on 5/29/2008 at 9:09 AM Flag For Abuse
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Are we twins separated at birth? My 16-month old son was also supposed to be a little girl named Ava!!! We had even bought the three shiny metal letters to put on "her" door. I so wanted a girl, and when we found out I was truly disappointed and shocked for a couple of days. All my friends were saying "Boys are wonderful!" but I just couldn't see it. Then one day while looking at my ultrasound picture a giant wave suddenly came through me and almost in spite of me, maternal love.
I don't even feel like I had to mourn pink and mini tea cups, and I truly enjoy watching him play with his trucks and sports things and dressing him like a cool little dude. Just like you, I can't possibly imagine why I ever wanted a girl, or imagine having a child that would be any different. To me, you wouldn't even loosely fall into the bad parent category.
posted by : Marie Eve on 5/29/2008 at 9:25 AM Flag For Abuse
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I hate to laugh at another mom in pain, but you seem like a good sport, so . . . hehehehe. You crack me up!
Excellent essay! I wasn't sure what (who?) I wanted - just healthy. Who I got was my daughter - girly girl who wants to dress like a princess and a tomboy who wants to throw herself face first off the picnic table. She's confused. So am I! And I love her all the same.
posted by : jeanne on 5/29/2008 at 12:59 PM Flag For Abuse
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I, too, wanted a little girl and wound up with an aggressive little tyrant. He gets so pissed off when he doesn't get his way and squeals like a piglet. He climbs everything, and if he falls, he immediately attempts to climb it again. I used to fantasize about the pretty outfits I'd dress my little girl in. Now when I see little girls dressed in layer upon layer of Pepto-Bismol pink and all the Hanna Montana and Bratz paraphenelia, I'm so happy to have my little boy in his little dude clothes.
posted by : lilmissyny on 5/29/2008 at 1:47 PM Flag For Abuse
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what you're referring to is essentially the experience of all parents -- the IDEA we have of what our child will be versus what they end up being... boys who wear dresses, girls who shoot with guns.. becoming a parent is an adventure in letting people be who they are
posted by : CrankMama on 5/29/2008 at 1:57 PM Flag For Abuse
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Wow, your son sounds just like my son! I secretly wanted a girl too, only because I come from a family of all girls and I didn't have much experience with baby boys. But out he came, 10.5 pounds at birth, lifting his head up like some 'roided-up monstrosity! Oh, but I quickly learned to appreciate him at the time; he was remarkably self-sufficient, highly adaptable to new people and places, never got hurt (physically and mentally) even though he was a daredevil. We could take him to a nice restaurant, a party full of adults, anywhere and he'll just chill out.
He's now 4.5, and we now also have a daughter. If I turn around to sneeze, she gets hurt and offended and then we have to talk about her feelings. It's really cute and I feel more like a "mom" vs. a referee, but man, we were so spoiled with our son. It takes forever to get out of the house now, because we have to prepare her emotionally as well as put on her infinitely-more-intricate-and-uncomfortable clothing. And we can never have date nights anymore, because Emily screams for hours if we dare leave her with a sitter (ironically, she doesn't look back when we drop her off at daycare). Sigh. It's nice to be needed, but then you're _needed_ all the time. :)
Before this whole adventure I would debate until the dawn about gender identification being a purely social construct. Not anymore. Nooooooo way.
posted by : julie00 on 5/29/2008 at 1:59 PM Flag For Abuse
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Sounds exactly like my daughter. Gender distinctions under four are fairly illusory.
posted by : Greg on 5/29/2008 at 2:05 PM Flag For Abuse
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Boys and girls are different! It's funny - my wife and I have been trying to figure out why our little boy LOVES trucks and construction equipment. We read all kinds of books to him and gave him all different types of toys but he simply gravitated towards trucks. It's like he was programmed. :) Who knows...?
posted by : k1 on 5/29/2008 at 2:05 PM Flag For Abuse
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I agree with Greg above--your son and my daughter (when she was that age) behaved EXACTLY the same...including the grunting and roaring. Two weeks ago, her grandmother caught her just before she took a flying leap from the back of our two-wheeled trailer on her tricycle--daredevil? The deuce you say! I don't think it has anything to do with gender. My daughter likes trucks and teacups, so maybe your son will too.
posted by : katydidmama on 5/29/2008 at 2:09 PM Flag For Abuse
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My Alex was Abigail up until 16 weeks. Feeling slightly defeated only because I felt I nothing about boys or what to do with them. I still feel that way sometimes because at 14 months their really isn't too much gender distinction when it comes to activities. I am happy with my kid because he truly quite funny.
Now what I really didn't expect was to currently be 6 months pregnant with his brother. Maybe girls are just not in the cards for me.
posted by : kmason79 on 5/29/2008 at 2:13 PM Flag For Abuse
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Uhhhh.....I didn't really see any characteristics that made him specifically male, but I definitely heard the waining of a toddler. I too have a son, so I am not on the up and up with girls as much. But I have seen some girls scream at super sonic levels, kick, punch and thrash about, climb things and play just as hard. I guess cause I was one of them growing up!! Marie Eve, why do you think your daughter is "confused"? Because she likes to play differently then your other daughter?
It is easy to get caught up in wanting a girl so bad. But I think commercialism has made it that way. Just look in the stores. I went to buy my son a bathing suit and I get to pick from the blue Hawaiian print or the blue and green Hawaiian print. Such choices, which one should I pick!! Then you look at the girls section and the fashion world is your oyster. It makes first time parents get emotionally wrapped up in all the things that are "girl" but not even think about what having a boy, girl or child is all about.
posted by : esterlulady on 5/29/2008 at 2:14 PM Flag For Abuse
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oops...I meant jeanne. Got my posts mixed up.
posted by : esterlulady on 5/29/2008 at 2:14 PM Flag For Abuse
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alright, alright, you don't have to knock girls in order to make yourself feel better about boys. truth is: girls RULE.
And yet, I'm happy to read all of your posts, because after my daughter Camille, now 22 months, I'll be having a BOY in July and can't escape feeling like I'll be introducing a terror into the house.
My sister shared the same bias for girls as I do. So when she found out (8 years ago) that her 2nd child was to be a boy, she had to gear up for it in much the way you describe. Now, of course, he is the apple of her eye and is very pro-boy.
And so, I've adopted as a mantra of sorts something I've heard her say to both of her children: "you get what you get and you don't get upset".
posted by : hambutt on 5/29/2008 at 2:38 PM Flag For Abuse
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I too wanted a girl. I almost cried during the ultrasound when she told me it was a boy. But he turned out to be the sweetest boy ever. Don't get me wrong though, he's all boy. He would never touch his stuffed animals or the baby doll we got him. It was always trucks and cars. My daughter is a little of both. She loves to be a princess, but she has the biggest mouth ever. She likes playing with trucks with her big brother, but then next thing you know she's cradling it telling it how cute it is. She will cradle and hug anything- from trucks to dinosaurs to earthworms they did up in the yard!
posted by : Cass on 5/29/2008 at 3:00 PM Flag For Abuse
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I got a boy, expected a girl. Have no frame of reference for boys. Now that he's 6 months old, I can't imagine anything else. Sometimes the best gifts are those you didn't know you wanted.
posted by : Rebecca_NC on 5/29/2008 at 3:01 PM Flag For Abuse
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The child's aggression and displays of anger and tantrum don't mean he's a boy or a girl, they mean he's not being disciplined properly by his parents. As with virtually all behavior issues, nothing to do with gender, everything to do with the parents. Ever hear of time out, naughty corner, that sort of thing? Used properly, they are miraculous in shaping proper behavior.
posted by : mrb on 5/29/2008 at 3:28 PM Flag For Abuse
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I like this post. I felt exactly the same way when I found out I was having a boy - very disappointed. Now I can't imagine that I ever wanted anything more than the little bruiser I got.
I'm at a loss as to why this is a "bad parent" column. Babble is really reaching lately - why not just cancel or rename the feature?
posted by : Don Mills Diva on 5/29/2008 at 4:51 PM Flag For Abuse
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I laughed from the first sentence to the last of this post! My son, Bam-Bam, is now 3.5, and I'm happy to report that he's slightly less of a Hulk. But he's still all boy. His first word was "ball." How his father and I ever produced this athletic, aggressive, stubborn creature is beyond me. (Well, maybe not the stubborn part.) But I adore him - and love seeing him greet every object as a chance to climb, jump, throw, ride or disassemble.
I'm 20 weeks with #2. Am I awful for really, REALLY wanting a daughter this time? I just can't handle double the number of ER visits! :)
posted by : Verity on 5/29/2008 at 5:04 PM Flag For Abuse
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On the relatively rare occasions that my nearly 5 year old daughter plays with a doll instead of trains, trucks or Matchbox cars, it has occurred to me that nearly all babydolls are girls. My daughter owns exactly 5 dolls and 4 of them are clearly female. Only one came dressed in a gender-ambiguous yellow and blue outfit. I guess the toy industry assumes that little girls will not want to pretend to be mommies of baby boys? When I was pregnant with my daughter, I desperately hoped that I was carrying a baby girl and when I really thought about why my mental image of motherhood was of me cradling a little pink bundle, I think it may have come from years of playing mommy to "Sally", "Mandy", "Rebecca", and "Jackie". At any rate, I did get my baby girl, but one whose pretty pastel dresses reveal legs covered with scrapes and bruises.
posted by : anonymous2 on 5/29/2008 at 8:04 PM Flag For Abuse
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Esterludy - it's ONE daughter :). She's a girly girl one minute, a tomboy the next! I don't really think she's confused - it was a joke!
posted by : jeanne on 5/29/2008 at 8:06 PM Flag For Abuse
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I am the mom of a 3 year old boy. Our boy is as energetic and "manly" as they come, but I have been in playgroups with friends who have girls of the same age, and seen him hit over the head with sticks and punched by girls. We also shared a nanny with a girl who used to bite him totally unprovoked. We have three friends who have girls 3-4 years old who have gone through periods where they throw tantrums so intense the family have leave where they are (a restaurant or a friend's house) and take them home immediately.
Point is, boys don't have a corner on the market for bad behavior. Girls can be just as difficult or worse to deal with. We are expecting our second boy any day now and I couldn't be happier.
posted by : bpfmomi on 5/29/2008 at 8:24 PM Flag For Abuse
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Cripes, this whole "i used to think gender didn't matter until i had my ___" meme is getting more mileage than "dear penthouse, i never thought i'd find myself writing to you..."
YOU ARE SEEING WHAT YOU WANT TO SEE.
posted by : muffinista on 5/29/2008 at 9:10 PM Flag For Abuse
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What you describe sounds very much like toddler behavior, seen through a thick lens of gender stereotypes.
Marlboro Man as a baby? And a Ladies' Man in preschool? Those are not truths that exist outside of culture. The way you characterize your son in this article is so riddled with cultural stereotypes that it's hard to wonder where his "boyness" came from.
We've got a 2-year-old son who plays with dolls and cars, is a crazy active toddler at times and plays quietly by himself at other times. Mostly is interested in books. He's himself, he's a CHILD first and foremost. He has peers who are girls who are more active than he is, and we know boys his age who are less active than he is, and everything in between.
posted by : Ugh on 5/29/2008 at 9:24 PM Flag For Abuse
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Okay, we get it...not all boys are always all boy, and sometimes girls like trucks.
posted by : mom of 3 boys on 5/29/2008 at 11:42 PM Flag For Abuse
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There is interesting research in the area of how we attribute gender-specific characteristics to infants depending on what gender we believe they are. i.e. When babies are dressed in a gender specific way, and introduced to people as girls (or boys), then people overwhelmingly respond to them as such and think they see feminine (or masculine traits) - appearance, behaviour, etc. - even in young infants! Imagine how we view this in toddlers, who have a much wider range of behaviours, some of which we pick up on and some of which we selectively ignore. And imagine how this consistent reinforcement affects the kids, despite the fact that we all believe we don't operate on gender stereotypes. Even if parents themselves were somehow able to undo all our cultural conditioning, the rest of our culture does not.
This is not to say there aren't some differences - just fewer than you might think.
posted by : anonymous2008 on 5/30/2008 at 12:37 AM Flag For Abuse
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the amount of people who don't believe that boys are truly different from girls is just hilarious to me. how absurd is it to say (or even to think...) that "we attribute gender-specific characteristics to infants depending on what gender we believe they are..." we "believe"?? are you nuts?? boys are born BOYS. with penises, honey. that's what makes them male. we don't decide children's gender, it just is. just like the sun is hot and the sky is blue. it's the way that God makes children. and that's all there is to it.
ugh!!! you people are really nuts.
posted by : me on 5/30/2008 at 1:45 PM Flag For Abuse
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HA! I have to agree with "me" on this. I get it that we can steer kids into culturally defined gender roles or whatever, but come ON people...stop being so smug.
I hang out with LOTS of moms with LOTS of kids (you people that think boys and girls aren't any different are probably the same ones who don't like moms groups). I have to say, the boys and girls are typically pretty different! Most of the parents in my group have actively tried to push their kids into playing with different kinds of toys, but the boys are obsessed with choochoos and the girls are obsessed with their baby dolls. Of course there are exceptions, but this is just what seems to happen!
posted by : tiffer on 5/30/2008 at 2:58 PM Flag For Abuse
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A Second for agreement with "me" on this.
The folly of some parents to try to suppress tens of thousands of years of evolution by forcing girls to play with trucks and boys to play with dolls or kitchen sets is utterly ridiculous and makes a mockery of our species. Of course when my son wants to play with my wife's baby doll we are all for it, but mostly he wants tanks and bulldozers and racing cars. At his day care center playtime and play items generally fall along gender lines. And guess what, the girls there wear dresses in the summer and the boys don't. Imagine that. Lighten up people. Good grief.
posted by : mrb on 5/30/2008 at 3:18 PM Flag For Abuse
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Awww... I love my little guys, too. However, they're actually pretty mellow, and I've seen many little girls behave exactly the same as Boone. If you'd gotten your delicate Ava, she might have been exactly the same. Who can say?
(All you "nature versus nurture" folks need to relax a little bit. We get it. It's a little of both. Not a tough concept to grasp. No need to hector the rest of us about it.)
posted by : Doppelganger on 5/30/2008 at 8:11 PM Flag For Abuse
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Hi "me" - I think you totally misunderstood the point of my post. I'm not disputing that babies are born with a body that's either male or female - of course!! In the studies I was mentioning, male babies were sometimes dressed as girls, and sometimes as boys - when they're dressed as girls people see feminine appearance and behaviour, and the reverse when girl babies were dressed as boys. That's what I meant by "the gender we believe them to be".
posted by : anonymous2008 on 5/31/2008 at 12:09 AM Flag For Abuse
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I think the "boys and girls are different after all" revelation is a genuine one that is unique to our generation. For most of human history there was not much surprise that boys and girls acted differently; we were probably the first generation to buy the argument in college that gender is a social construct.
And I am sorry, but having spent the last 3.5 years surrounded by dozen of girls and boys, and completely agree with everyone in this discussion who is saying that the differences at a very early age are very pronounced. Sure, there are some girls who are more boy-like, and there are some boys who are more girl-like -- all individual boys and girls fall somewhere in a range of behavior between the poles of gender stereotypes (it sounds like this writer's son falls squarely on the boy-behavior pole). But *on average* girls and boys are extremely different.
My 3.5 year old boy is obsessed with construction equipment and understanding the physics of objects. He likes people to, but he responds more powerfully to the physics of objects, often, than he does to people. He doesn't give a damn what he wears every day, and has close to zero interest in reporting on the behavior of other children (also known as gossip, which should not be seen as pejorative -- it has social utility, which is why it is a common behavior ... and yes it happens to be practiced, on average, more by women than by men).
The girls in my son's class come home and tell their mothers what different chldren did in the class, what they were wearing, and express concern about what other kids think about them. Our son, meanwhile, would be more likely to pronounce that the school wall is made of bricks, which are connected with cement, and you would need a jackhammer to make a whole in the brick wall. If anyone who has a daughter who says such things, I would love to meet her ... not one of the many dozen little girls I have met to date behave like my son.
I don't doubt that cultural reinforcement further exaggerates some of these traits -- there is no doubt that the habit of telling little girls that their shoes are cute increases their interest in which shoes they are wearing each morning. But the suggestion that these behaviors are entirely created by culture is an insult to the intelligence of anyone who has spent more than a couple years around children.
posted by : chattydaddy on 6/1/2008 at 9:50 PM Flag For Abuse
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this piece rubbed me the wrong way. even while claiming to love the boy for what he is, you speak about him like he's a neanderthal to be pitied. this is typical of america today. the feminazis have succeeded in socially castrating men, and banning all masculine impulses. our poor boys are left frustrated and confused by all this pseudo-intellectual feminist BS. mother's like you are the reason books like "fight club" were written.
posted by : Mitraillette on 6/2/2008 at 12:10 PM Flag For Abuse
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I've got a girly-man of nearly 5 years and a tomboy of nearly 2 years. The girl has lungs like you wouldn't believe (is MUCH louder than her big brother), is extremely active, and has shown little interest in dolls -- probably because she wants to play with whatever her beloved big brother plays with. My son loves having his toenails painted and is very sensitive and affectionate -- yet he's all boy in that he has loved cars, trucks, airplanes, and trains from pretty much day one. The point is that kids are individuals, each a blend of stereotypically male and female characteristics. Sure, on average boys do certain things and, on average, girls do other stuff (a tendency that increases with age and exposure to peers -- a tendency that I'm sure is exacerbated by TV and popular culture). But we, as parents, should just let kids BE, to the extent that that's possible in this gender-obsessed world of ours. I do feel that the author was just desperate to interpret her son's behavior as being stereotypically boyish, even though, from what I can see, it's pretty close to my daughter's. I laughed particularly at the description of the boy as a "Ladies Man" because he loves to kiss -- my daughter also kisses everyone in sight. Is she a "Ladies Man"?
posted by : Pamlet on 6/3/2008 at 1:08 PM Flag For Abuse
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"yesterday's music class, when all the other kids were sitting in a circle playing with their maracas and tambourines and my son stampeded up and down the room like King Kong until he belly-slid into the wall"
- so, all the other children were girls, according to your theory? Or were there possibly, gasp, some *boys* sitting playing with their instruments?
What a ridiculous article. Anyone who wanted a delicate flower of a daughter clearly has very polarised ideas of gender, so it's not surprising they encourage their son to be a little thug.
posted by : portico on 6/19/2008 at 2:46 PM Flag For Abuse
